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Saturday, April 30, 2011

I am swiping this little bit of information from the California Legislative Analyst Office and posting it here to inform Californians of the real state of the pension crisis we are facing. I am cutting and pasting it from the site, formatting and all - this is what your legislators know about the pensions and should be screaming and sounding the alarm. Instead, there is no mention of this, and they are merely trying to get tax increases passed to maintain the status quo.

This is not including the most recent travesty; within the next 3 or 4 years we will be handing prison guard union members roughly $600,000,000 that is Six Hundred Million Dollars simply to cash out their accrued unused vacation. That has nothing to do with pensions. They have 8 weeks of paid vacation per year and they can roll over an unlimited amount until they retire - at which point they receive a big, fat lump sum payment - calculated based on their pay rate of their final year on the job. Thank Jerry Brown for that deal - he just inked it last month, I believe.

State contributions to pension and retiree health programs for state employees, as well as contributions to the teachers’ pension program, have increased substantially in recent years. The primary reasons for this increase are the weak performance of retirement system investments in several recent years and rapid increases in retiree health costs. In addition, costs have increased due to increases in pension benefits adopted at the beginning of the last decade.

In general, as a result of measures passed by the Legislature in 2010, state employees hired beginning in 2011 will receive lower levels of pension benefits—similar to those in effect prior to 1999.

The state does not have plans in place to address substantial unfunded liabilities in the teachers’ pension program, state employee retiree health programs, and retirement programs for University of California employees.

RH

PS - It is interesting to note that the only people who are benefiting from these obscene government benefits are members of the BABY BOOMER GENERATION. The same hippies who managed to get the ESTATE TAX REDUCED TO 0% for the years that their hard-working Great Generation Parents were dying off and they were inheriting all of their money - something the Economist called "the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of the world". Now that they have their money tucked away, they need to make sure they have cheap labor to take care of them in their old age - and can turn their attention to esoteric pursuits such as phony environmental crises. Never mind that the cheap labor will rob non-boomers of decently paid jobs and that the fanatical approach to the environment is causing business to flee out of the state and country. You don't need a job, little Boomlets, aka Millennials you just have to wait for your inheritance. Don't worry about GenX! We are used to getting screwed by the Boomers and we are good at surviving. But isn't it unfair that you Millennials have to wait sooooooo very long for your inheritance? I think it is unfair.

PPS - Also the same Boomers who made a huge stink when they had to go off to Vietnam to fight and refused to do so, but happily engage in not one but THREE simultaneous wars which send youngsters off to die in the name of what? I am not even sure anymore - do they bother to justify it anymore?